Fort Eustis, Woman At Odds Over Mold

Deadly Fungus Made Kids Sick, Mom Says

NEWPORT NEWS — A woman who lived in Fort Eustis housing until two months ago says a potentially deadly mold infected her family's base home and threatened the life of her infant son.

Cherie DeSanto blames the mold stachybotrys atra - which can cause fatal respiratory problems in infants - for her son's breathing problems and chronic bouts with bronchitis. Those problems peaked in December when the boy, then 1 year old, suffered a wheezing fit-turned-seizure that landed him in the hospital for two days, she says.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Thursday, July 10, 1997.A story on Tuesday's front page incorrectly identified Norfolk-based Interscience Research Inc. as Interspace Research.

The Army says DeSanto's poor housekeeping and Giovanni's allergies, not killer mold, caused the boy's problems.

Stachybotrys, a slimy, black fungus often found in houses affected by major water damage, has been linked to life-threatening pulmonary hemorrhage - or bleeding of the lungs. In the past four years, 33 Cleveland infants have been sickened - nine of them fatally - by the mold, says Dorr Dearborn, a pediatrician who treated many of the babies at Cleveland's Rainbow Babies & Childrens Hospital.

About one-third of the cases were reported to the Centers for Disease Control in November 1994 and received national attention when "PrimeTime Live" aired a story about the deaths earlier this year.

"We have not proven there is a connection because the methodology is not there yet," Dearborn says. "But there is epidemiological evidence. Thirty years ago, the Surgeon General said that based on epidemiological evidence, we would get cancer if we smoked cigarettes.

"So even though we can't prove this is killing children, do we let babies die and don't do anything about it?"

DeSanto says no. She was so concerned the mold was in her home that she paid Norfolk industrial hygienist Joseph Guth $750 to test the mold, which was growing on the insulation between the walls of her home. Guth confirmed the fungus was stachybotrys.

"This home here had roof damage for the last five years," DeSanto says. "These roof leaks are causing the stachybotrys. Mine was going between the roof and the ceiling."

An especially large leak opened up above the ceiling of the family's Fort Eustis town home in October, just three months before DeSanto's son, Giovanni, was hospitalized. That water damage is evidenced by paint bubbles that dot the walls and ceilings of the five-room home.

Stachybotrys grows on water-soaked cellulose products such as paper and ceiling and wall materials. DeSanto said she fears that other families living in similar 40-year-old base homes may be exposed to the mold. She says it also made her other two children, aged 4 and 7, lethargic and headachy.

"My husband is in the Army, but my children aren't," DeSanto said. "My fear is that they won't fix the problem and they will just move another family in here."

Fort Eustis spokesman Ron Johnson said Army officials tested the air at the DeSanto home and paid a civilian contractor to double-check their work, but found nothing unusual. The Army offered DeSanto, an enlisted man at Fort Eustis, new quarters on base and gave the family permission to live off post. The DeSantos lived with friends for several weeks, and moved to Gloucester last month. "The Army bent over backward to accommodate Mrs. DeSanto," Johnson said.

He said no one else has ever complained to Fort Eustis about stachybotrys. Army officials said something else was responsible for Giovanni's illnesses - perhaps allergies, DeSanto says. They also told DeSanto to clean her quarters better, change air filters more frequently and to ban smokers and pets from the home, she says.

However, DeSanto has letters from three Peninsula civilian physicians - Scott Pharr, DeAnna Trail and Stephen Shield - all of whom suggest that mold or other environmental factors in the family's home may be responsible for the children's health problems.

In addition, a memo written by an Army public works official outlines the military's attempts to fix the leaks that have plagued the family's quarters, on Madison Avenue at Fort Eustis.

"This set of quarters has endured moisture infiltration above the ceilings and in the walls for five years," wrote Thomas Connell, an architectural technician in the engineering service division of the Army's Directorate of Public Works.

Dissatisfied with most of the Army's findings, DeSanto hired Guth to test the mold she found in her home. Guth's culture, which grew for nearly six weeks, came back positive for stachybotrys. The Army's cultures, which tested negative for the mold, grew for just four days, DeSanto says.

Guth, the laboratory director of the Norfolk-based Interspace Research, says the Army's testing methods were flawed. "Air tests answer one set of questions about the environment, but they don't answer others," says Guth, who has nearly two decades of experience as an industrial hygienist. "The important thing is to go to the source to find the mother lode. You need to sample that material directly. You have to do surface sampling where the molds grow."